North Coast Night Light: Watching the World Go ‘Round
On the Humboldt coast in the thick of winter the skies are often obscured, and a fleeting glimpse of the stars may be all one receives in an evening. One such winter night my son, my brother and I took a trip out to Moonstone beach to observe the world turn. We stood between two planes: the wet, glossy sand beneath our feet and the sliding cover of clouds above. Forming a great wedge, the two surfaces met at the horizon in front of us and opened like a gigantic hinge. A tear in the clouds revealed behind them the vast cavern of space in which we float.
As we stood and watched we got the sense that the world turns very slowly indeed; we didn’t perceive any evidence of it turning at all, in fact. One needs time to observe the motion of the Moon and stars, and instead the clouds were moving in swiftly, eating up the little sky we could see. The crescent moon hanging in front of us was quickly engulfed.
The slope at Moonstone Beach is wonderfully gradual. When the tide is out as it was that night, the occasional far off wave will send a low sheet of water unfurling slowly across the sand to deposit a fresh coat of gloss. A cobble texture created in an earlier tide made little islands in the receding water, breaking the reflections of the bright night sky with almost metallic crispness.
The photograph shows the scene brighter than it was to our eyes. Because the camera gathered light for many seconds, and its sensor’s ISO was dialed up fairly high, it was able to pick up more light than we could see. Looking at the image that the camera captured I get the sense that we were standing on a plate of wet, textured iron. We were on the outer hull of spaceship Earth, hurtling headlong through space.
To see previous entries of “Night Light of the North Coast,” click on my name above the article. If you’d like to keep abreast of my most current photography or peer into its past, you can follow me on Instagram at @david_wilson_mfx . I update my website mindscapefx.com less frequently, but you can contact me there.
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Nice pic and good morning read Oliver. I go for early morning walks and get great pictures of the stars.
Oliver posted it but he forgot to indicate David Wilson wrote it.
I am so sorry. I really love David’s work and I was just looking through it agian and saw that I didn’t give any credits to David I felt like a 🤬🤬🤬 my apologies. 🖖🖖🖖
We need more David.
More great work, David.
The first photo here is by far my most favorite of his work. Maybe because it’s all natural light and not a flashlight. But I do love and appreciate his art.
I told you! Just ONE HIT!
Ahh, Moonstone…ahh, David’s photographs…eternally magnificent…
Great front cover for a CD.